Much of the human and animal population will experience pain emanating from joints or discs at some point in their lives. For example, pain may be located at or near the lumbosacral intervertebral disc, sacroiliac joint, tibiotalar joint, and subtalar joint. Diseases or disorders in any of these or other areas can cause debilitating pain as well as limited mobility in a patient.
There are many treatments for alleviating the pain emanating from joints or discs. In one field of therapy, surgical devices may be implanted at one or more locations to treat such painful conditions. For example, fusion devices may be positioned between vertebrae or within/across the sacroiliac, tibiotalar and subtalar joints to facilitate their fusion. Such devices are typically employed in conjunction with rods, screws, hooks, or plates that are also connected to neighboring bony elements. Problematically, due to a significant increase of surgical fusion technologies at joints neighboring the sacroiliac joint, tibiotalar joint, and subtalar joint, a degenerative process of these joints may occur because adjacent surgical fusions may accelerate neighboring joint degeneration. As a result, joints which rarely become diseased will become increasingly diseased. Moreover, many joints will require surgical treatment in the future due to an accelerated disease process.
Systems are also connected to these anatomic sites in the absence of fusion devices, so as to support or realign elements such as vertebrae. Such systems include non-fusion technologies such as arthroplasty/joint replacement of the intervertebral disc, tibiotalar and subtalar joints. No such motion-preserving technologies are believed to be known for the sacroiliac joint.
Disc nucleus implants are also known for receipt within the interior space of a damaged or otherwise ineffectual intervertebral disc. Many such devices that have been proposed are formed of hydrogels or elastomeric polymers, for absorbing impact and other forces occurring between the vertebrae.
While there are a wide array of implant devices, most have in common the need for relatively large surgical incisions for insertion, and many of the arthroplasty implants require a more traditional open surgery. Drawbacks in the application of these devices include invasive open procedures whereby the surgeon directly visualizes the joint and performs the surgery through sizable incisions that may lead to increased rates of early morbidity including wound complications.
Furthermore, the implants inserted for fusion and arthroplasty are inherently unrelated, necessitating a definite pre-surgical plan that sometimes may be difficult to predict. As a result, multiple implants must be present at the time of such surgery which often creates delays in preparing the proper implant, leading to longer surgeries and monetary waste since prepared implants and devices may be unused.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for synergistic medical devices to treat various joints and discs, such as the lumbosacral disc, the sacroiliac joint, the tibiotalar joint and the subtalar joints, in a more efficient and effective manner.